


saffron rises / 泛泛

by Irrelevancy



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Consensual Somnophilia, Creampie, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Inappropriate Use of the Force, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Pre-Rogue One, Rimming, Ritual Sex, Water Sex, post-Yi City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:00:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27911143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irrelevancy/pseuds/Irrelevancy
Summary: When Song Lan came back to, his Master was sitting in front of him in solemn waiting, Master Îmwe smiling to himself some ways behind, dabbing sweat from his brow.“A-Lan,” Baze Malbus said. “What did you see?”or; Songxiao get married after Yi City. Guardian of the Whills fusion.
Relationships: Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus, Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn/Xiǎo Xīngchén, Ā-Qìng & Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn & Xiǎo Xīngchén
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27
Collections: Songxiao Secret Santa Exchange 2020





	saffron rises / 泛泛

**Author's Note:**

  * For [qinghelaozu (horangiyuta)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/horangiyuta/gifts).



> HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HOLIDAYS QINGHELAOZU!!! Thank you for such excellent prompts—the rough draft of this even had flower crowns but those unfortunately didn't make it into the final ;;;
> 
> Soundtrack for this fic: "[She is a Bleak Star](https://youtu.be/BAoCZowB92g)" by Muma ft. Zhou Shen. Link is to a YouTuber who very kindly subs the songs he reacts to (i also really like his reactions), the song starts at 0:38.
> 
> CONTENT WARNING: Though it never skirts the premise of noncon, please do note this is a consensual somnophilia fic.

Song Lan often thought back on his memory of watching an afternoon spar between his Master and Master Îmwe, nearly three years ago. He remembered vividly the billow of sunlight through the open ceiling of the training grounds, the sight of Jedha—big, pale, and teeming with starship activity—hanging high up in the distant blue sky, and the last metallic rings of the Temple bells buzzing in the air.

He remembered the Force, whipping around and through both Masters’ staffs, wrapping about and into both Masters’ bodies. That was the first time his sight of the Force had ever been so clear, and caught by surprise, Song Lan had held his breath practically the entire time, desperate for the vision to not go away.

So he’d sat in stunned absorption as his Master struck.

As Master Îmwe guarded, grinning.

As his Master pressed the advantage and cut in.

As Master Îmwe welcomed him in, familiar and unapologetic, turning intimacy into combat back into intimacy.

As Baze Malbus met him blow for blow, kiss for kiss, like all was both and neither were itself, at least not alone. Song Lan watched as bodies transcended skin, selves transcended language, until the most basic building blocks of how Song Lan’s Masters lived became incorrect and not enough—things like speech and things like being. To talk in any language was to translate and lose the original. To be in any flesh was a shedded transposition. Song Lan watched, until the Force expanded from his Masters as epicenter, and came to the border of his being. Song Lan initiated no transgression, and let the Force continue expanding, until it too had dissolved him.

When Song Lan came back to, his Master was sitting in front of him in solemn waiting, Master Îmwe smiling to himself some ways behind, dabbing sweat from his brow.

“A-Lan,” Baze Malbus said. “What did you see?”

Song Lan promptly blushed so hard that he passed out.

* * *

Years later, after two eyes lost and one eye gained and a permanent cap on how much breath he could draw, he felt on verge of doing the same. He stood at the edge of the Holy City, mesa cliff dropping deep at his feet and the dark warm beige of NiJedha’s desert sprawled before him. His Master was a sturdy presence at the shoulder of his blindside, but Master Îmwe and A-Qing were at Song Lan’s other shoulder, both unrepentantly smirking.

“And thus it is upon us to grant to all,” Master Îmwe spoke, nodding sagely, “what we would wish for ourselves.”

“Please,” Song Lan said through surly teeth, nerves on high vibration, “do not use the prayers of Sister I’Yin for such a—”

He broke off before finishing the thought, but still felt his Master’s skeptical lift of an eyebrow, and his own disappointment in himself slithering like a python bite, hot in his blood.

“Is this not a holy pursuit, Disciple Song?” Master Îmwe asked lightly, for all appearances unperturbed. When Song Lan first became an initiative at the Temple, he’d brought with him nothing but pride, that which had stiffened his spine and kept his chin up through the devastation of his home planet and the subsequent months of harried wandering. Now though, after everything—the good-everything and the bad-everything, the love and teaching from his Masters and their daughter, as well as the pain of decomposition for weeks and weeks and _w_ _eek_ _s_ at Yi City—Song Lan knew better than ever that pride was not the only way.

So Song Lan bowed his head now, and made himself relax his jaw. The joint where his nanotech tongue was attached whirred in relief.

“It is,” he said seriously, repentantly, “the holiest of pursuits.”

And he meant that. He meant it so much that he was even able to breathe (with mild exasperation) through A-Qing’s snickering. Master Malbus set a big hand on the back of Song Lan’s traveling pack; it was weighty with approval.

“Find your way to the beginning,” he quoted in that Morellian cannon voice, resonant in gunmetal. Song Lan was more than ready to complete the prayer of blessing:

“Again.”

“And again.”

“And again.”

The last line was spoken together by all four present at the departure, and the ritual was almost complete. It was customary for the Rites that all members of the send-off party bless the traveler with predictive well-wishes that would chart his foray into the Waiting of Night—they had done the same for Xiao Xingchen’s departure nearly two months ago, and A-Qing was the last one left.

Song Lan slanted a look at his favorite shimei, and caught her already grinning in his direction. She was wearing the green training robes of junior Guardians, far more formal than her usual garb, and looked poised to fling it all off the moment they were done.

Yet she had been the one to insist on being present. Song Lan could almost think she offered out of love.

“That which rises must fall,” A-Qing spoke, “and that which falls must rise.”

The operant word there being _almost_.

“Follow the wisdom of Sage Kiru Hali.” A-Qing was practically _leering_ from glee now, and had Song Lan not just been lectured on feeling unnecessarily and immaturely embarrassed about this whole affair (and he wasn’t—wasn’t ashamed, wasn’t in doubt, wasn’t anything close to regretful, truly—he was honestly just nervous), he would let go of his iron grip on the bit of qi that had taken pity on him and was helping him keep his blush down. “You’ve fallen hard, Song Daozhang—now _rise_ to the occasion.”

“Teach our daughter to be less shameless,” Master Malbus drawled, lobbing his constructive criticism over Song Lan’s head.

“Teach our son to be more,” Master Îmwe immediately shot back, and placed a hand over Song Lan’s bag as well. “I still look forward to the day you properly convince me of a situation in which having shame is more useful than not, apprentice. Return safely.”

“Return whole,” commanded Master Malbus, with a good dose of irony.

“Return,” A-Qing cackled, slapping an open palm on Song Lan’s back, “married.”

 _It’s not a marriage_ , Song Lan wanted to say. _It’s a holy communion in the most sacred and raw of places. It’s a joining of souls and cores with the blessing of the Force_.

But he closed his eye (the one that always felt a little too cool in his socket every morning) and, for just one moment, consumed the warmth of the rising morning and the hands on his back. He thought about cold dust in the hollow of a tongueless mouth, the helpless horror of watching the people you cared about walk themselves straight onto spearing swordpoint, wondering why in sith’s name the Force would will this. He also thought about the inability of language being the most beautiful thing in the Force sometimes, his Masters dancing around each other like becoming the air to be breathed. Here he stood on the edge of the desert, the holiest place he knew at his back—it wasn’t about clarity, it was about faith, the type of faith that yielded understanding.

So Song Lan stepped forward and pivoted neatly (done were the days of him stumbling off-balance, still getting used to the singular eye). He drew his hands together, elbows lifted in precision as his Master trained him. He bowed in devotion, as his other Father taught him.

“This A-Lan,” he spoke quietly, using the most intimate name from their odd little family unit, feeling overripe and sweet with sentiment, “will take his leave now, and return as swiftly as possible.”

“Step into the next,” Master Îmwe smiled.

“May the Force be with you,” Master Malbus sent.

* * *

Yi City had been a harrowing, haunting experience that to this day, even Master Îmwe didn’t like to bring up. It had been awful enough from Song Lan’s perspective, so he could only imagine what it was like from his Masters’, to have lost a child and an apprentice (two children, if the Masters’ kind insistences were to be believed) so suddenly, to believe them dead and passed on into the Force. To have been the ones to send A-Qing and Song Lan off in the first place.

But how astounding an experience it must also have been to greet, ten months later, the tiny escape pod being piloted by the daughter (who definitely did not learn how to fly that particular model of Republic starship at the Temple), bringing with her not one but two grievously injured men, one of whom was the pilgrim the Guardians had sent Song Lan and A-Qing to escort in the first place, and the other the apprentice on the verge of death from blood loss and a parasite even the most venerated medic in the Holy City had never seen before.

How implausible to see that the pilgrim had clawed out one of his own eyes and shoved it in the apprentice’s skull, in a desperate bid to keep the parasite contained in the eaten-empty socket instead of burrowing further into the skull.

A year had passed since that horror, and the technical aspects had been sorted out readily enough—surgical removal of the parasite, a custom-ordered nanotech tongue, and two weeks in a bacta tank to sort out all the biological rest. Having lost consciousness in Yi City with two fundamental beliefs—that he was going to die, and that he would never see any beloved faces again before he did—Song Lan had been rather disoriented when he woke up with neither of those things true. An unintended side effect of the bacta was that the pilgrim’s (Xiao Xingchen, of course) eye had been fixed right into Song Lan’s nervous system, much to Song Lan’s distress, but when Song Lan confronted him about it, Xiao Xingchen had only laughed and adjusted his single eyepatch in relief.

 _When I took it out_ , he’d replied, _it was already yours. I’m only glad that the Force allowed a more literal manifestation of my meaning, that the eye can still be of some use to you, and that A-Qing flew faster than the parasite could eat._

It was odd enough, bearing someone else’s eye. It was odder still to bear an eye with such a history of pain. At the end of the day though, even when tears ran bloody and Song Lan’s skull felt on the verge of splitting with nightmares, he could center himself in that eye. On the days the threat was losing himself, the eye became bedrock lips that spoke the name _Zichen_ , and on the days the threat was the opposite, with Song Lan collapsing into himself like a white dwarf star, the eye’s foreign nature yanked him out of that devastating gravity. Along with the Force and the Temple, the Eye made its way onto Song Lan’s tongue in daily prayer.

(Well, he said “eye.” That wasn’t quite the name he spoke in devotion.)

So that was that story, a heavy and dense piece of stone embedded deep into the sole of some combat boots—the shoes were still functional, and walking could be done some days without acknowledging the stone at all. Song Lan still had days when he noticed the stone. Xiao Xingchen and A-Qing noticed the stone. Even Master Malbus and Master Îmwe took turns noticing the stone—but there was no helping that. All was as the Force willed it. All any of them could do was acknowledge the weight, the stone’s cool tapping with every step, and keep walking.

Song Lan wondered, if he were to continue the simile, what their current proceedings could be. Taking off the boots, perhaps. Shedding the flak jacket and the body armor, leaving the lightbows at the door. Opening a window. Letting the wind in and smelling Spring on the desert’s breathing.

Meeting Xiao Xingchen’s gentle, unsuspecting gaze and getting to his knees.

 _It’s not my life for yours_ , he’d said that day, that warm morning in the shared dormitory room with the infirmary linens finally gone, with Xingchen’s neck scar finally faded. _It’s not paying back a debt owed._ _What happened_ _was neither of our faults—that was our agreement._

And Xiao Xingchen had looked so scared—not of the proposal but of what Song Lan wanted it to mean.

_Then what? What is it that you want from me?_

Eye had met eye, pupils mutually dilated with adrenaline, with desire so deep it was gravitational.

 _Understanding_ , Song Lan had answered. Hoarse. Fierce. _I want yours, and I want to give you mine._

And Xiao Xingchen’s smile rekindled with his pre-Yi City brilliance; and bacta was bacta, but true healing began, Song Lan learned that day, with their souls’ mutual dawning.

* * *

So that was the story. Still ongoing, still coalescing in form. Song Lan’s boots were strapped in tight but the stone had nothing to strike audibly against on the desert dunes. The sands sucked Song Lan’s treads in so heavily as well; he felt no additional labor in carrying that stone today.

Walking was part of it. Every dragging step, every beast and hunting creature deflected without killing was a piece of Song Lan’s meditation. Every kilometer was to be walked with whole-hearted devotion to the Rites; if done correctly, the desert fed you. And sure enough, walking on with a calm heart and steady knees, Song Lan felt his body—every new and old part of it—imbued with pure yang Force, the muscles and fat beneath his skin thrumming with it.

Traveling on like this, Song Lan arrived at the entrance of the kyber caves by mid-afternoon. Another thirty clicks or so southeast would bring him to the more intensive quarrying operations with refineries and runways and miners’ cabins and the transport drones perpetually flying about. The Cold Spring Caves, however, were unpopulated. They were unremarkable from the outside, flagged only by a single slowly spinning beacon ten paces out, and unremarkable on the inside as well for about another half hour’s walk.

After passing a certain energy barrier however, everything changed.

They called it Wings Passing, after the Sage of the Lan Clan who created it, centuries before the Holy City had even be conceived of. Legends went she, in closed cultivation, achieved such a state of resonance with the Natural Force that the yin nature she brought forth created a realm of icy water, the Cold Springs, in the middle of the unforgiving NiJedha desert. Afraid of the cold spreading, she sealed the yin Force and herself away, her human form dissolving until she was sheer yin embodiment and a dangerous lodestone, to never be moved or risk implosion with how dense her power had become.

The ninety-ninth year of her being sealed away, however, brought a pilgrim to the barren moon. At this point the yin Force had grown so strong that the desert raged its hottest with the yang Force in a desperate bid to balance it out. On the brink of molten, the heat had surely been too much for most sentient beings to bear—but this pilgrim bore it. So tough with rage and loss she was that the pilgrim dissolved her corporeal form away too, until she was pure yang embodiment to match; she gathered up the Force of the desert to go knocking at the Sage’s cave barrier, to not only survive it, but to thrive once she’d passed it.

They’d come together in a moment so brilliant with the Force that they created life on the once-barren moon. Some say the outflow of water unearthed the kyber mines that now fueled everyone from the Temple to the Jedi Order; others say their joining was the invention of kyber crystals themselves.

And though its religious inventions were contested, the Legend of Lan Yi and the Mountain Pilgrim without a doubt created the framework of Force-marriages that was most widespread through the galaxies. It existed in a great amount of variation depending on culture and class and Force sensitivity, but every five years or so, devotees regularly made their way to NiJedha to take up the original rituals, and undergo the Rites.

This was the ritual: a thickly thrumming _pop_ first upon the drums of Song Lan’s ears, then deeper into his whole cranium. The way desert became water and sand became crystal. The way memory became pain that was present, then the present became memory again. Song Lan, in his combat boots and body charged up with yang Force from the desert, felt every bit the exalted foreigner as he entered the cave—the dust being eagerly swallowed by the pearl. Yin Force wrapped like water around him if he were the droplet of golden oil; he was being contained and cherished both at once.

 _To understand_ , Song Lan whispered back, and the Force parted in a clear path, guiding him through the maze of cool earth and stone. There was an electric torch in Song Lan’s pack, but he didn’t need it. He merely closed his eye and followed the breathing.

And when the narrow, crawling, sometimes squeezing path finally expelled him into a wider space, Song Lan opened his eye to soft pale light. There was a pool of water, sitting prim and foggy with chill between the boulders. There was a spread of soft bedding on the dry ground before it.

There was Xiao Xingchen, lying prone and floating in the middle of that glowing water.

And these were the Rites: a claim, a proof, and a convergence. Together, they’d made their claim, and separately, they’d done their proofs—and now, with Xiao Xingchen purged of everything but the yin Force and Song Lan soaked thoroughly in the yang Force, it was time for convergence.

Having researched the original Rites before setting off, Song Lan remembered vaguely wondering if, once in the caves, he’d find the set-up too cliché or stiff or maybe even nerve-wracking to, well, get in the mood; he was relieved to find now that he didn’t.

Maybe it had to do with the silky glow of the water, infused with the Force and rippling just a bit too thickly under the ambient glow of the kyber quarry like molten glass above. Or perhaps the white robes, threaded with gelatinous blue and clinging to Xiao Xingchen’s fine musculature. Maybe it was Xiao Xingchen’s hair, eddies of the most viscous ink; Song Lan could practically smell it, the ever-comforting, ever-holy scent of synthesized bamboo fiber pages treated to last for aeons and the dry, almost herbal licks of his Masters’ ink bottles.

Maybe it had to do with the clear invitation, the energy pods set purposefully around the perimeter of the water and the web of talismans planted in another circle inside, resonant in their relativity. Maybe it had to do with the way the soaked robes dripped so languidly between Xiao Xingchen’s legs, hiding nothing at all.

Song Lan knew the formation of the energy pods, had helped ink the talismans himself. He could very clearly read the staging of this ritual.

_Come fetch me, Zichen. And bring me home._

Breath unsteady, Song Lan released the pins in his hair, and began to shed his robes.

Desert sand sloughed off with every layer, drawing a rippled barrier of soft gold behind his heels. He kneeled to fold the articles neatly and to set them aside, and the circle of sand widened. Finally, he shed his boots, knees peeling off the smooth rock surface, the naked soles of his feet trailing three, four, five fading steps’ worth of sand across the ground.

When Song Lan’s right foot dipped halfway into the water, the Force array and all the footsteps behind him began to glow and vibrate.

“Xingchen,” took off from his tongue like pupation. He wasn’t sure if it was a call meant to greet, meant to wake, meant to warn. Maybe it was meant to chastise, the sight of Xiao Xingchen unconscious and so vulnerable just lying there piquing Song Lan’s protective instinct. Maybe it was meant for gratitude, a _you’ve done your part, now let me do mine_ sort of acknowledgement.

The first touch too felt uncontrolled, but in the way that precipitation was not meant to be controlled. Song Lan felt like water, like roots from floaters in the water spreading to touch but not to cling. He felt like gifter, giftee, and the gift all at once, just sheer _presence_ in a cosmic transaction; he felt dissolved and diffusing everywhere, over Xiao Xingchen’s body and under his robes, between his limbs, within the crevasses of his hair’s minute topography.

He felt held, when he too held Xiao Xingchen in his arms. He felt the stripping when Xiao Xingchen’s robes came away between his fingers.

“Xingchen,” he said again, this time definitely a summoning. The energy field was being run through with fissures of golden yang Force and blue threads of the yin Force. Song Lan felt the ripples pushing back at him, strumming down his spine as if he were a percussion instrument. “Xingchen.”

He felt the blight of the moment he entered Xiao Xingchen’s body.

The Rites brought them together, apart, then back together again, just as the original Sage and Pilgrim were. So here was the joining: desert displaced and water reallocated between each grain. The cave itself going fluid and rippling. Xiao Xingchen’s own rippling tightness around Song Lan’s cock.

The lightest flutter of Xiao Xingchen’s eyelashes over that single closed eye, before it didn’t open.

_We make the claim of who we are and what we will be, and each become the proofs. When the time comes for the convergence though… Zichen, you’ll have to be the one to bring us together, and carry us to the finish. The yin Force is too cool. I’ll be too scattered._

The start of it all was exactly as the Book of Rites said it would be, yet utterly, completely, fundamentally different.

For one, the Book did not go into detail about positions.

Xiao Xingchen sank easily into the water upon a touch. He wasn’t exactly limp or dead weight, thanks to buoyancy, but was still a bit tricky for Song Lan to get his hands under. It felt a bit rude, for example, to let anything above ears to slip under the water surface as Song Lan pulled Xiao Xingchen further up his cock, even though objectively Song Lan knew this wasn’t _water-_ water, and the saturation in the yin Force would keep Xiao Xingchen from drowning.

Another piece of objective knowledge that Song Lan was in possession of was that, right here in the cold spring, he had to bring himself to climax inside Xiao Xingchen. As far as tasks went this was bound to be odd, because no matter how many books (passed to him by a grinning Master Îmwe and a squinting Master Malbus both) Song Lan had read, no matter how much solo meditation he’d done on the subject, it didn’t change the fact that he and Xiao Xingchen had not come anywhere close to penetrative sex in the jagged progression of their relationship outside these caves. They simply had not had the time nor opportunity.

Honestly they’d barely even kissed—Song Lan could count on one hand the number of times Xiao Xingchen’s lips or his lips had made contact with the other’s skin.

But they’d talked about it. Of course. They’d had to. They’d even talked about the possibility of consummating for practice before undergoing the Rites—there was no requirement for the Rites to be their first times with each other.

But in the end they’d decided to leave it to the Force. They were both practitioners, after all, and though Xiao Xingchen was a pilgrim and not a hard-line subscriber to the Holy City’s interpretations of faith, both their cultivations suggested a chaste mind to be beneficial to receiving the Force. So they would follow the paths of the heart they were both more than used to, and let the first (and second, and third, and fourth) consummation be conducted within the embrace of their faith.

That was, of course, all easier said than done. Holding Xiao Xingchen’s buoyant body close, Song Lan began to thrust. It felt— strange. He was trying to decide if it felt bad. He did his best to be true to his own emotions, as Xiao Xingchen insisted, and not worry about hurting Xiao Xingchen if the Rites end up only half-complete.

But then, Song Lan’s gaze fell on Xiao Xingchen’s neck.

It was a beautiful neck, to be certain. Song Lan had always liked that neck, the way it embodied such poise, but was so happy to bend—forward in humbleness, to the side in curiosity, backward in wonder. This was also the neck, however, that had been the site of Song Lan’s greatest devastation—the absolute, perfect horror of watching the man he loved take his own life.

Song Lan remembered well the saber that had slit Xiao Xingchen’s windpipe. He remembered acting as the emissary of the Guardians when he gifted Xiao Xingchen the kyber crystal to power that saber.

A peculiar thing happened then. Recalling the fall of Xiao Xingchen’s body at Yi City, the stillness of him like an abandoned starship drifting in dead space, Song Lan’s mind superimposed that memory onto the sight before him now. He saw Xiao Xingchen’s beautiful, unconscious repose in the water and the yin Force and wondered _how?_ _How did this man find the strength to put his body at the mercy of somebody else’s hands again?_

And then he remembered Xiao Xingchen’s request for him: _Bring me home. Zichen, bring me home_.

Song Lan thought about how goddamn long it took for them to set up everything for the Rites in the first place, to the point of tedium if they were being honest about it, and how this was all doable only if Xiao Xingchen really, really, _really_ wanted this.

Wanted Song Lan to find his unconscious body and fuck him back to life again.

So Song Lan, against all odds, grew harder, the yang Force at the base of his stomach getting hotter, and he continued thrusting. The fantasy of revival sang in his mind.

He soon came for the first time that day with Xiao Xingchen wrapped tight in his arms, water rippling thickly around them. The moment that thread of warm heat made its way through Song Lan’s cock, as if finally freed from some previous stoppage, he also felt Xiao Xingchen’s legs come up around his waist, and squeeze.

“Xingchen—?” Song Lan gasped. But Xiao Xingchen’s face stayed buried in Song Lan’s neck, eye closed. This was fine, Song Lan reminded himself. This was how it’s supposed to be. He didn’t anticipate Xiao Xingchen waking until the third round.

The technical purpose of this conjoining was, quite simply, the joining of the pure yin Force and the pure yang Force. Xiao Xingchen wasn’t technically pure yin and Song Lan wasn’t technically pure yang—those simply weren’t possible states for humanoids to aspire to. But they’d forced themselves close; they’d borne the discomfort of freezing, the ache of burning, and proven themselves ready for even just a simulacrum of one of the universe’s greatest phenomena.

The moment Song Lan’s yang energy met Xiao Xingchen’s yin—a drop of gold in the water that quickly dissipated into the solvent—there was presence. And pressure. Song Lan grunted, a breathless gravely thing, as something snapped into ignition behind the base of his spine and he got _harder_.

Desperately hands gripped onto Xiao Xingchen’s ass, the thicket of Xiao Xingchen’s hair, and Song Lan began to move Xiao Xingchen down and up over his cock once more.

It wasn’t anything like he’d imagined it to be, in the sense that it was so much _better_. His admittedly limited imagination, further stifled by a penchant for embarrassment, never allowed him to dream of Xiao Xingchen’s silken grip, the pleasure of the water changing temperature against him. Sometimes it felt cool, and sometimes the exact same temperature of Song Lan’s skin, glowing bronze underneath the water surface while the pink of heat began floating up the pale expanse of Xiao Xingchen’s back. Song Lan had never dared to consider how _good_ the athleticism of fucking felt, how thoroughly satisfying and propelling, primeval and original and fundamental.

He was utterly unprepared for how damn gorgeous Xiao Xingchen looked unconscious on his cock. The pliancy was terrifying, but all the more alluring for it—it was a monument to Xiao Xingchen’s mortality that Xiao Xingchen had built himself. It was purposeful absence, in which Song Lan was meant to thoroughly understand what it was for Xiao Xingchen to be _gone_ from this relationship. The body was nothing without the life in its eyes. The body could burn to ash without a soul to animate it.

…Which made the thought of Xiao Xingchen _waking_ to this all the more compelling, and invigorating, and hot. Song Lan allowed it to run wild now, his imagination—it was much easier to dream of the bloom when the bud was already present. He imagined Xingchen’s lashes in heavy flutters, peeling apart. He imagined Xingchen’s moment of disorientation between sleep and consciousness. He imagined the filling girth, the thrusting weight of his cock being the first thing Xingchen came awake knowing.

There wasn’t enough leverage in the water. Not for what Song Lan wanted to do at the thought of all that, not for what Song Lan wanted to give. He pushed through the cold spring, Xiao Xingchen held tight to him, until they reached the bank.

He laid Xiao Xingchen gently but urgently down on the layer of bedding, took Xiao Xingchen’s thighs in hand, and began in earnest this second round of fucking.

Xiao Xingchen’s brows were furrowed, and between his parted lips Song Lan could see a red, feverish wet. His hands, sprawled out at his sides, were unconsciously clenching, releasing, clenching, releasing. The veins in his wrists were aglow with pale blue light.

His passage around Song Lan was still invitingly slick, Song Lan’s entire length gliding in and out with ease. Song Lan pulled out until just the tip of his head remained inside, and watched the subtle flutter of Xiao Xingchen’s rim struggle to cling to him. Then Song Lan pushed all the way back in, until the juts of his pelvis were nestled firmly up against the meat of Xiao Xingchen’s ass, and he could see Xiao Xingchen’s hole stretched smooth and wide around his entire girth. So sweetly accommodating.

And Song Lan did it again, pulling out all the way this time. The muscles around the hole remained loose for a moment, begging to be filled. A displeased little whine even hummed a note in Xiao Xingchen’s throat.

Then liquid white began to trickle out, and Song Lan _moaned_. He drank in the sight of his spend (with a slight golden tinge) dripping from Xiao Xingchen. He watched Xiao Xingchen clench weakly, trying to keep it in, and petted the hole back open again in gratitude.

He dove down until his chest, hot with heat, hit the freezing cold of the basalt flooring, and he swore he heard a hiss of water going to steam. But impossible temperatures didn't matter—what mattered was the salt of Xiao Xingchen and the musk of himself on his new tongue. The tech-grown appendage had never tasted anything so sublime, and he lapped and lapped, pushing warm semen back inside Xiao Xingchen's hole as the thin skin over Xiao Xingchen's stomach trembled above his head. It was trembling on the verge of wakefulness. It was trembling as the slack body battled with consciousness's mastery coming up from beneath.

Then Song Lan got back up, pushed his cock all the way back into Xiao Xingchen, and came inside once more. He fucked his way through this ejaculation, yin water and his own spit wetting Xiao Xingchen's skin so that the filthy percussion of hips slapping together echoed in the rocky room.

Just when he began to calm down from peaking, Song Lan felt the tight squeeze of flesh around him, and a warming.

"Xing—"

A cool hand on his shoulder, a heel tucked behind his knee. A chilly light. Song Lan felt the gravity yanked out from beneath him as he was twisted, falling with his back on the bedding and an _oomph_ knocked out of his patchwork lungs.

But he wasn't complaining, because Xiao Xingchen was sitting up in front of him, sitting _on_ him. Though he'd pulled off for the brief moment of the turn, Xiao Xingchen had dropped right back down on Song Lan's cock, and Song Lan once again found himself nestled in all the way at the base. And Xiao Xingchen had his hands on Song Lan's chest, fingertips softly playing with Song Lan's nipples. And Xiao Xingchen's eye was glowing.

Blue, icy light. The pupil behind it didn't look focused, but the light itself seemed intent. Intent on something. Intent on Song Lan, the golden light spilling from around Song Lan’s own vision.

Song Lan still hadn't gone soft, yang energy coursing ever-hotter through him, as if the more he fed Xiao Xingchen the more fervently it reproduced itself. That was perfect by Xiao Xingchen's apparent compulsion, because though Xiao Xingchen's parted mouth was silent, Xiao Xingchen began to lift and drop himself on Song Lan's cock with eager abandon.

"Xingchen—!" Song Lan gasped, thumbs finding first the seam between Xiao Xingchen's hips and thighs, then further up onto that pale beautiful cock, so hard that it slapped against its owner's stomach on every bounce. "Xingchen come back to me—"

Xiao Xingchen's lips moved, but no words came out. _I'll be too scattered_ , he'd said. That eye wasn't blinking. Song Lan thought he could see a blue glow slipping out from under the eyepatch as well.

Then Xiao Xingchen gave Song Lan's cock a long, needy _squeeze_ , and Song Lan arched up from the blinding pleasure of it. His own hips thrusted up on rhythmic instinct, and Xiao Xingchen dropped himself down with such force that it felt like he wanted Song Lan to _break_ something inside him.

Sweat was beginning to pour from Song Lan's body, hotter and hotter. It dripped to the cold floor, and left white streaks of salt after evaporating from the cool and smooth expanse of Xiao Xingchen's skin.

Song Lan worked Xiao Xingchen's cock, and it twitched but didn't come. It couldn't. Not until Song Lan got enough of the yang Force into him, not until there was balance.

And on the flip side there was Song Lan, whose fever was just beginning to tip over the edge into discomfort. But that was alright, it was still bearable. He was getting all the climactic pleasure here anyways, he ought to enjoy it. Savor it.

By the third time Song Lan came, there were vicious red welts clawed over Xiao Xingchen's ass and thighs, and Song Lan couldn't even bring himself to feel sorry about it. Xiao Xingchen just looked so _good_ like that, gaze unfocused, with just enough slack in the body to seem a bit doll-like, like Song Lan was fucking the fantasy sex droid of his least humble dreams.

By sith it felt so _wrong_ , so taboo to be thrusting up into Xiao Xingchen like this, like he was using Xiao Xingchen for his pleasure and Xiao Xingchen wasn't even there to consciously witness it.

…But in another way it kind of felt like gift-giving. Like Xiao Xingchen had said he wanted something, once upon a time, and Song Lan was getting it for him in perfect secrecy. The pleasure was in the revelation, the reawakening, the revival.

The pleasure was in the eye, which Song Lan watched with devout desperation, even as sweat trickled into his own, and stung.

So Song Lan got to see the moment he finished coming, and Xiao Xingchen came truly awake. He got to see the stumble into consciousness and the immediate assault of pleasure. The startled heat. The disbelieving indulgence.

And when Song Lan gave one more achingly hard thrust, he got to see the relishing, _debauched_ surrender to pleasure of the eye rolling back.

"Zichen—"

Song Lan's mouth was open and dry, but it was his turn for speech to fail. The heat had taken over his throat, to the point where golden sparks were snapping between his cheeks and teeth as the nanotech build of his tongue rushed to adjust. The back of Song Lan's head hit the bedding, as he choked out a deep, heavy groan. It was a sound that was as much pleasure as it was pain. His hands were still clawing at Xiao Xingchen, as much needing him to keep going and needing him to finish.

"Oh Zichen— Darling wait, I've got you, I've got you—"

Xiao Xingchen's mouth found his. Lips. A messy slather. Teeth. Knocked together. Tongues. Cold spit. Tasting. Tasting.

"It's so hot inside your mouth, let me help you, let me help…"

Frost coaxing loose the inside of his cheeks, and mellowing the thrumming electricity of his tongue. And Xiao Xingchen was petting him all over—his neck, his shoulders, his ribs. Everywhere Xiao Xingchen touched came the most Force-blessed coolling so Song Lan could only desperately try to grab Xiao Xingchen back. Every touch of his felt like it left Xiao Xingchen blistered—Xiao Xingchen certainly hissed like it, but also with every touch of his Xiao Xingchen arched further into his palm. Pleading. Craving.

Xiao Xingchen's ass around him felt practically _freezing_ now, which was more a testament to how hot Song Lan's body had gotten than how cold Xiao Xingchen may or may not be. Xiao Xingchen twitched around him, moaning, rolling forward and back in little gyrates that left both their teeth gritting in impatience, but they needed a little break. Mewls of pain escaped Xiao Xingchen's throat whenever he dragged himself up on Song Lan's cock a little too fast, and all of Song Lan felt _aching_ with fever. Song Lan wanted this over with but didn't know how. He wanted this to continue forever into oblivion and he didn't know how.

One more time. One more time ought to do it. The talismans and lighting array around them had illuminated to near-full capacity. One more time should break the wall of a false dichotomy between the two of them and send the most natural Force-manifestations of their beings careening into each other's needy embrace.

Xiao Xingchen's hands settled with conviction on Song Lan's chest, right over the spot where his energy blade had pierced Song Lan through at Yi City. As Song Lan lied there, moving but wordless, he wondered what Xiao Xingchen was remembering. He wondered if superimposing each other's deaths onto the corresponding bodies was a necessary part of these Rites, if it was _healthy_ , for fuck's sake, that he could see Xiao Xingchen shuddering, Xiao Xingchen's cock weeping harder at the memory.

But of course he didn't bother wondering too hard. They were both _here_ , weren't they? They'd both chosen the reenactment of their own deaths and given it to each other as a _wedding present_ , with nothing but a flimsy promise of _look I'm still alive_ as gift-wrap.

It was a fucked up interpretation of the Force—in all likelihood a sinful trespass of every preachable faith—but it worked for them. Heat escalated and freeze went further still; desert met ice, and the glacier in sublimation caressed the sun.

Xiao Xingchen started fucking himself on Song Lan once more, crying out in pleasure.

They lied there, chest-to-chest, Xiao Xingchen's elbows braced on either side of Song Lan's head as Song Lan touched him everywhere, kissed him until he was red, and didn't speak. Song Lan's palm cupped Xiao Xingchen's ass once more, digging in until Xiao Xingchen keened, digging in until he got enough purchase to flip them around again.

When he was underneath Song Lan, Xiao Xingchen thrashed, seeming for a moment like he was going to squirm right out. Instead, he only positioned himself lower, the small of his back bent at a more pressable angle so he could lean up and suck at Song Lan's Adam's apple.

He lapped at it like a frozen man finding fire, and in contrast, Song Lan could yell, like a burning man being doused in blissful water. Song Lan kept him bent, and fucked him harder. Song Lan found the angle that made the muscles of Xiao Xingchen's abdomen flex hardest and worked at it at a fervent pace. He worked at it until Xiao Xingchen was _sobbing_ , digging teeth into the meat of Song Lan's shoulder and drawing blood so hot that it steamed.

Friction. Compression. Heels kicking against back. Nails on forearms and a begging tongue. Xingchen hiccuping _Zichen, Zichen, Zichen_ like it was all he knew to be salvation in the world.

Song Lan came for the last time like the sun figuring out how to set, spilling over the horizon a cup of the most luscious red warmth. The talismans array around them went bright, then blinding with light. This was the granting, he thought, to all what we would wish for ourselves—this was the perfect bliss of generosity. And togetherness. And giving and giving all you've got until all that you gave made something big enough to come back to you.

Xiao Xingchen came for the first time like an asteroid becoming life, microbes starting to kick in pregnant ice. This was the way to the beginning, the again and the again and the again, the dying and the revival and the death and the living. This was Xiao Xingchen's come spilling hot against Song Lan's cooling stomach, after each cycle back to the beginning brought them closer and closer to the ending.

Then Xiao Xingchen collapsed down on top of Song Lan.

Then Song Lan embraced Xiao Xingchen lying on top of him.

Their breaths synced up, one inhaling while the other exhaled. Chest refused to leave chest. Limbs in complete, perfect contact. Warmth to warmth.

"All which rises must fall," Song Lan panted, barely audible, in Xiao Xingchen's ear.

"And all which falls must rise," Xiao Xingchen returned in the most intimate murmur. They rose and fell with each other, fell and rose. They fell into each other. Rose from each other.

So these were the Rites: a claim, a proof, and a convergence. They'd claimed what they were: alive. They'd proven it by dying. And now they were converged again, back at the beginning.

There was no true return to the beginning, of course. That wasn't what the Force was for. But there was a return to familiarity, a return to skin marked by a scar but not torn by a wound. There was a return to stable balance, once the Natural Force had been separated into false opposites with all their might, and then allowed to snap back together again.

Song Lan lied there on the bedding with his lover, his Force-blessed _husband_ in his arms, and quietly petted Xiao Xingchen's back.

"Did I ever tell you," he asked quietly, "about the first time I saw the Force?"

Xiao Xingchen lifted his chin, a faintly embarrassed, mostly pleased blush freckling his cheeks. He pressed a kiss to Song Lan's throat and shook his head.

"Not yet," he replied. Eye met eye, the exact same color. "Tell me about it on the way home?"

**Author's Note:**

> \- the quotes that Chirrut & Baze & A-Qing say are all taken from the _Guardian of the Whills_ novel  
> \- thatsnothowtheforceworks.gif
> 
> HAPPY SONGXIAO HOLIDAYS Y'ALL ❄️  
> i think guessing who i am is a freebie dnfjksndfs


End file.
